What We've Been Up To and a Freebie

Mercy! The last two weeks have been super hectic for me!  We all know how very, very busy these first few weeks of school are.  But, my daughter is also playing high school volleyball.  I've been on the road A LOT!  So I am dropping in with a quick update on the things we've been up to in second grade.

Miss Nelson is Missing

After reading Miss Nelson is Missing, we completed this comprehension project about how Miss Nelson changed from the beginning of the book to the end.

I love how this student said Miss Viola Swamp changed their (the students') attitude and the paper airplanes on the other example are too cute!  The pattern for the the characters came from this TpT product by Mynda Rivera. The comprehension page is from Jen Jones - Hello Literacy.  

The students greatly enjoyed the reading fluency practice we did with this book; changing their voices to sound like Miss Swamp was fun for them and fun to hear.

The Teacher From the Black Lagoon

Seven years ago, Mike Thaler came to our school for our Annual Young Authors' Conference.  He was an incredible presenter!  I went to see his presentations although I was off work at the time going through chemo for a recurrence of my cancer.  He had recently lost his wife to cancer.  When I got to meet with him, he was very compassionate and encouraging.  I will always be grateful for that encounter.  That makes this book very special to me.  

I find that this story lends itself well to retelling practice (as well as reading with expression again!) We made paper bag books.  The children's job was to retell the story in 3 parts.  Here are some examples:

Making this booklet was super simple and the boys and girls LOVED it!  Here's a freebie... I copied these patterns for the students.  (The creature pattern, I copied on green paper.)  To make the booklets, a parent helper stapled three index cards onto paper bags.  The cards go just below the bottom fold of a flattened bag. Then the open end is folded up and tucked below the bottom flap. Hopefully, the pictures can guide you, if you would like to make paper bag books yourself. They can be used for many things; I like using them for vocabulary work.

Number Bonds

We're practicing number bonds in our class.  Here, the kids are using pennies to practice number bonds.  They flip the pennies and then record the number of heads, number of tails, and the total as a number bond. The recording sheet came from the book Building Number Sense by Catherine Jones Kuhns.  This is a great resource book, especially for K-1 teachers!  I adapt the activities according to my second graders' needs and abilities.  Now that the kids are familiar with this activity, it will become a math station.

Literacy Stations

The class has mastered our procedures for literacy stations!  Here are some of the boys and girls hard at work at a couple of their favorites.  I'll share more about our literacy stations in a future post.

Have a great week everyone!  I am off to enjoy this beautiful end-of-summer weather before tackling school work and laundry!

Yours in education,

Mrs. C.

Using a Metronome and Other Fun Things

Well, we are sailing right along in these first few weeks of school here in 2-C! I have some fun ideas and classroom news to share with you...

First, I want to ask if any of you use metronomic pacing for some of your classroom drills? This is a great tool for making drill work fun and engaging. 

I learned about this from attending workshops with Robert Gossom. If you ever get a chance to see him present, go!  He has awesome ideas for multi-sensory instruction.  He taught special education for over forty years before retiring and becoming a consultant.  Watch for him at SDE conferences. (BTW, Bob happens to be my stepfather and mentor.)

One of the many fantastic ideas I got from Bob was to use a metronome when doing math fact or word-reading drills.  Right now, my class is loving using the metronome when we practice our math facts. As soon as I pick it up, I hear "YEA!" I display a set of facts for all to see, set the metronome for a specific pace, and we say the facts and answers together at a steady rhythm.
The kids love it as I increase the speed, especially when we get over 100 beats per minute! They never get tired of this type of practice. You can do this type of drill whole-class, in small groups, or individually.

I bought my metronome from Bob, who sells them at his workshops.  But, I know they are available for purchase online. Bob is also a Tucker Sign Reading trainer. But, that will have to be another post!

In phonics, we're practicing on beginning blends.  An activity that my students are enjoying is to substitute the beginning blends for the initial consonant sounds as we sing the chorus of the song, "Zippity-Do-Dah." I have a laminated chart that I use when we sing. (We also do the Tucker signs as we sing.)

Some of the blends become tongue twisters. This song is a great way to practice beginning consonants and digraphs too. We sing it when we're lining up or transitioning; it's just a happy, fun way to work with sounds!

How cute are these paper plate pirates?

I got the pattern at DLTK. We used ours to display an assignment from the book How I Became a Pirate.  The practice page is from this product by Jen Jones - Hello Literacy.  I am loving this purchase.  Here is a close-up example:

We started math stations this week.  I am using a Bingo Card organization system like this one from Third Grade Thoughts. It is working out really well. Here are some of our current stations in action.

The play dough materials came from Stephany Dillon's TpT store. She has awesome products and has been a great help to me in starting my blog and store!  If you haven't looked at her products, you should!

One last math station my students are LOVING is our "Magnify-cent" Math station.

The materials for this station are available at my TpT store.  I am offering the sets individually and in an unlimited bundle.  If you could have seen my students' reaction to the introduction to this station, you would know why I am planning to make many more sets to add to my bundle!  The kids are enthralled with the magnifying glasses.  I love that the sets are easy to prepare and have cute accountability sheets.

Now I am off to enjoy the afternoon on the lake with friends and family.  I hope everyone has a wonderful Labor Day weekend!

Yours in education, 
Mrs. C.

We ARRRG Going Strong!!

Hello!

I hope all of you in school have gotten off to a great start for the 2013-14 year. For those of you not yet in session, I hope your preparations are coming along well!

Can you believe how busy those last few weeks before/first few weeks of school are?  All of those "one time things" sure take a lot of time!!

We started Aug. 9 and have just completed our first full week.  I have to say I have another fantastic set of kiddos to work with this year.  I find it soooo fun getting to know their individual personalities and figuring out what makes each child tick!

I have a pirate-themed classroom decor and will be doing several pirate-themed lessons during these first few weeks.  Here are some pictures of a couple of projects we completed this week:

After reading Pirate School, the boys and girls showed how the main character, Pete, changed from the beginning of the story to the end.  

Here are two examples of a pirate glyph we completed.  On Monday, we are going to collect and analyze the data from these glyphs.  Both of these projects are adaptations/combinations of things I purchased on TpT; sorry I can't share the patterns. I got the ideas here and here.

As, I am SURE you know this weekend is the BIG BTS Sale at TpT. I am excited to offer an unlimited bundle of my "Magnify-cent" Math activities.  My students loooooove these activities and I know yours will too.  I just purchased several adorable clip art sets to use to make more products for the bundle. You can check the bundle out here.  Whatever, you decide to purchase this weekend, have fun shopping with all of the amazing deals available.

Yours in education,
Mrs. C.

Classroom Tour

I finished decorating my classroom JUST IN TIME! Tomorrow is our Meet Your Teacher Night.  I can't wait to see my new students and their parents; I know we're going to have an amazing year!  So let me share some pics for our room...

First, here's our door and the view from the hallway. (Sorry about the date stamp.  I put fresh batteries in my camera and forgot to reset the date.)

This is the view from the doorway.

Here is the entry area of our room.

This board says, "Treasured Work." The table to the left is our Creation Station learning center.

Sorry this is fuzzy.  Here are our mailboxes and small group table which are located near the entryway.

I never sit at my desk but I keep all of my teaching materials in this area.

This is the door to one of my two awesome closets. Have a peek...    

Here is my library.

The focus wall...

Math tub area...

The Pirate Cove is our puzzles and game center but the kids go their during SSR too.

Our classroom aide works with kids here.

This is our back wall.

Our meeting area.

The pirate-themed number line is available at my TpT store.  I love it!

Here's the front of the room.

The tent is our listening area.  That's it!  Thanks for taking a look at our room.  I am sure enjoying checking out all of the other rooms being posted.  Everyone have a great year!

See more classrooms at Bits of First Grade's linky tour or Swimming Into Second's linky.

Mrs. C.

Sometimes It's the Little Things...

You know what I mean?  You do a little something new and you are so happy with it.  Well, today I tried a tissue paper bulletin board border technique that I saw online. I'm very happy with it.  I got the idea and instructions here.  

Here is picture.  Yes, you will see that I have A LOT more decorating to do.  I'll post pics when I'm done. I wanted to share this now in case anyone else wants to try it.  Let me know what you think!

Yours in education, 

Mrs. C.

Best Game!

I'm joining the linky at The Teacher's Chair again today.  The topic is best game.  I want to share a game called, "Mr. Picky-Eater."

You can use this game/activity to practice all kinds of skills.  Here is how you play...

1.  Display a chart with text.  I usually use a poetry chart or morning message.

2. Make a t-chart like this: 

                      

3. Decide on a characteristic for sorting. The possibilities are endless- words with tail letters, words with 5 (or any number of) letters, words with 3 syllables, words with blends, words with inflectional endings, plurals, proper nouns, words with long vowels sounds, etc.

4.  Tell the students that Mr. Picky-Eater is hungry.  He is hungry for words.  BUT, he's very picky.  He's only hungry for a certain kind of word each day.  Their job is to figure out what kind of words Mr. Picky-Eater is hungry for that day so they can feed him.

5.  The students then take turns guessing words from the displayed text.  As they guess words, write them on the "yummy" side if the word has the desired feature.  Write other guesses on the "yucky" side.  

6.  After a few words have been placed on the t-chart, some kids will tell you they know what Mr. Picky-Eater is hungry for (even if they don't).  Tell them not to say what they're thinking but instead to give you a yummy word.  Keep playing until most of the class has figured out the sorting rule.

7.  Then allow students to guess the rule.  Test their guesses by going through the words listed on the t-chart.  If the rule holds up, see if there are more words you can feed Mr. Picky-Eater.  

Your kids will LOVE this game.  My students are always excited when they see the "yummy/yucky" chart on display in the morning. They know we're going to feed Mr. Picky-Eater and they NEVER get tired of doing it!

Here are some samples, see if you can guess what Mr. Picky-Eater is hungry for. :) I put the answers below.

                           

See how easy it is?  The answers are:

1. compound words

2. words with four letters

3. nouns

There you have it.  If you have any questions, leave a comment and I'll get back to you.  I can't wait to see what games everyone else has to share!  Have a wonderful Wednesday!!

Mrs. C.

Favorite Read Alouds

I LOVE reading aloud to my class!  It is a favorite time of the day for everyone in 2-C!  The Teacher's Chair is having a week long linky and today's theme is favorite read alouds.  So here are a few of my faves...

This book is hilarious!  The kids love hearing it over and over again. They also enjoy reading it to themselves early in the year. :)

I think Margie Palatini is awesome!  All of her books are amazing. But I have to say this is my favorite of the bunch...

Mo Willams is the author of two of my favorites:

Can you tell by now that I enjoy humorous books? Ha!

My Hero is Mem Fox.  Her book Radical Reflections changed my professional life.  Several coworkers and I went to hear her speak years ago.  We sat in the front row and cried we were so thrilled to be seeing/hearing her in person.  So, of course I read all of her books with my class.  These two are tops...

Here are a few favorite chapter book read alouds.

Now I am off to school to work in my classroom.  We start Aug. 9! I'm so ready to meet my new kiddos for the year!  I look forward to seeing the other posts in this link because I'm always looking for the latest, greatest books out there! 

-Mrs. C.